Ryan Handy, AICP
Ryan Maye Handy is an urban planner whose work has included development permitting, workshop facilitation, and running technical assistance programs to help communities plan for the effects of a changing climate. Connecting with people, learning about their worldviews and challenges, and helping them live well within their chosen landscapes are guiding principles in her work. Ryan’s expertise supports Headwaters Economics’ Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program, which has helped more than 80 communities across the country increase their wildfire resilience. Thoughtful urban planning can help communities reduce the threats of wildfire and also rebuild more resilient infrastructure after a disaster. With a master’s degree in urban and regional planning and certified by the American Institute of Certified Planners, Ryan has a particular interest in watershed-level solutions to problems such as post-fire flooding. In addition to her strengths as a planner, Ryan spent more than a decade as a journalist working for newspapers in Texas and Colorado. Drawing on her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, she specialized in disaster recovery and resilience reporting, and covered hurricanes, wildfires, catastrophic floods, and oil and gas development, among other things. Ryan is a native of Santa Fe, NM. The effect of climate change on the American West has been a passion and common thread through her life and professional career.
Session(s):
Burning Questions: Rethinking Growth, Land Use, and Building Codes in a Fire-Prone World »
APA Utah 2026 Spring Conference: Bryce Canyon, April 9, 2026 10:15 amThis interactive workshop builds on the keynote to dig into how zoning, subdivision standards, and building codes have heightened wildfire exposure across the West—and explores concrete policy, regulatory, and design tools communities can use now to create safer, more fire-adapted development patterns.
From Zoning to Conflagration: How Everyday Land-Use Decisions Shape Tomorrow’s Wildfire Disasters »
APA Utah 2026 Spring Conference: Bryce Canyon, April 9, 2026 9:00 amJoin Ryan Handy from Headwaters Economics as she shares how historical zoning codes, subdivision standards, and growth decisions across the West have increased our risk for the next wildfire disaster— and what planners, officials, and communities can do now to steer development and building patterns toward safer, more fire‑adapted futures.
= Keynote
